Middle East

Muhamad Mansur is a first year Israeli Palestinian medical student at
the Hebrew University of Jerusalem.

On Saturday, 8 January following a football match between Beitar
Jersalem (an Israeli Jewish team) and Sons of Sachnin (an Israeli
Palestinian team) which ended with a victory for the latter, Muhamad
went to a shopping mall where he works. Three plainclothesmen started
speaking to Muhammad at the entrance of the mall, and told him that
there were many violent fans of Beitar around and asked him to come with
them to his car for his own security. Muhamad replied that he didn’t
have a car and that he had to get to work. The policemen grabbed him and
took him to the parking area and there they just started to beat him up.
When Muhamad asked, "Why are you beating me up - you have just offered
to protect me", these racist police thugs replied that he was an Arab
and therefore a member of an inferior race.

After a while the policemen left him, but when he tried to use his phone
(to call for help) one of them took it from him. He was then bundled
into an unmarked car and taken to a police station.

There Muhammad explained he was tortured and humiliated him for a long
time. Muhamad spent his night at the hospital because of the wounds he
received.

Israeli Palestinian students contacted Maavak Sozialisti members and
asked for our help in a campaign against this racist brutality. Along
with other activists, Maavak Sozialisti issued a call for a one hour
student strike on Monday morning 10 January on the university campus
which Muhammad attends. Within a few hours a joint leaflet signed by
Maavak Sozialisti members and Palestinian activists was produced in both
Hebrew and Arabic calling on students to join the action.

Although there was not a full observance of the strike, many students,
both Israeli Jewish and Palestinian supported this call and over 120 of
them organised an impromptu demonstration around the campus. Even
Israeli Jewish students who live in the Jewish settlements around
Jerusalem participated in this demonstration. This was one of the
biggest demonstration that has taken place on this campus recently.

Later on in the day, over 50 students demonstrated outside the police
station against the brutal attack on Muhamad was beaten up in.

Both these events took place despite threats from the state apparatus to
take repressive action against activists and Maavak Sozialisti members
who called for these actions.